


Iridian

by Lovejoy



Category: Naruto
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Implied/Referenced Torture, Major Illness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-12
Updated: 2019-05-12
Packaged: 2020-03-01 15:34:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,213
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18803200
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lovejoy/pseuds/Lovejoy
Summary: It had been years since Sasuke had seen his brother with black eyes.





	Iridian

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Mornelithe_falconsbane](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mornelithe_falconsbane/gifts).



Several crows were perched on the roof of the Grass Country house. Their beady black eyes stared at him as he approached, but they didn’t fly away. They simply watched.

Itachi was here. He had to be.

Sasuke slipped inside. The place was deathly silent. He felt nothing—no chakra signatures, no killing intent. Itachi was hiding. Probably watching. Coward.

But Sasuke was ready for him.

The first few rooms were empty. The place seemed completely abandoned, until Sasuke turned a corner and saw someone sitting in the middle of the room, facing him. He had a hand on Kusanagi before he realized the figure wasn’t moving—that they were tied down and slumped forward.

And with an ugly, gut-wrenching jolt, Sasuke realized who it was.

The air around Itachi was cold. The strange unreality that usually seemed to cling to a genjutsu-user’s body had left him. He felt hollow, like a husk. A coffin with nothing inside.

It was surreal. For a moment, Sasuke was certain it was an illusion—but there was nothing to break, no reality that could be shifted, no lie to be shattered.

Then Itachi's head lifted.

His face was mottled with bruises, his skin sheened in cold sweat. Matted, stringy black hair, unbound, stuck to the streaks of blood that had tracked down his cheeks from his eyes. The sclera had flooded red, but the irises were black—the Sharingan was gone. His gaze was dull and vacant, pointed somewhere over Sasuke’s left shoulder.

It had been years since Sasuke had seen his brother with black eyes.

“You're not Kazuki,” Itachi said. He sounded like something thick and jagged was stuck in his throat; like he was only barely present.

Sasuke stared at him, contempt curling on his tongue. He’d never seen Itachi look so damaged, so vulnerable, so weak. So— _wrong._ Like this, Itachi wouldn’t even be able to fight back. He’d be dead before he'd even realized who had killed him.

And Sasuke could kill him.

Right now.

No. This wasn’t right. It was too easy. This wasn’t how he wanted it to be—it wasn’t a challenge, it wasn’t how it was supposed to happen. Someone else had done the work for him.

Someone else. What had Itachi said? _Kazuki?_

Sasuke knelt before his brother. As if reading his mind, Itachi’s focus crystallized. A faint sliver of life, of awareness, returned to his hazy, bloodied eyes.

He whispered, “Kisame?”

Sasuke’s brow furrowed in appalled confusion. Didn't Itachi recognize him? Couldn’t he see who it was? Hear his voice, at least?

“Who did this,” he hissed, but Itachi’s eyes had glazed over again, unfocused. Sasuke put a palm to his sweat-tacky forehead. It was burning hot, clammy with unnatural fever. He was sick. Drugged, or poisoned.

Sasuke drew chakra to his eyes. The Sharingan spun to life. He looked, and saw.

Itachi’s chakra pathways were dead.

No—not dead. Dying. Clogged. Something maggoty and black was wriggling in them, sticking like tar, blocking them up and eating at them. Some kind of slow-acting poison.

He really was just a husk. No wonder he hadn’t recognized him. He couldn’t sense anything. He was no better than a civilian.

“Kisame, get out of here,” Itachi murmured, his voice low and sluggish. “The poison…” His eyes drooped closed, and his chin fell back to his chest.

The well-nurtured flame of hatred flared deep in Sasuke’s gut. _No._ “Wake up!” he hissed, grabbing the back of Itachi’s skull to force his head back. His hair felt slick with blood. When he took his hand away, it was streaked in red.

“Well, this is a surprise,” said a voice, and Sasuke whipped around.

The missing-nin—Kazuki—was a plain, ordinary-looking man. He could have been any number of Kusa villagers. There were no scars on his face, nor on any visible part of him: he wore bland civilian clothing, save for the scratched hitai-ate belting his obi to his waist. Sasuke was reminded hatefully of Kabuto; the absolute unassuming banality of his appearance. Kazuki didn’t look like he could take on someone like Itachi and win. He didn’t look like anything at all.

Then he smiled. His teeth were tar-black.

“Uchiha Sasuke,” he said softly. His eyes glinted. “It’s an honor. And such a touching reunion, too.”

At the name, Itachi’s head lifted again. An expression of hazy alarm had crawled across what was visible of his face. “Sasuke?”

“That’s right, Itachi-san,” Kazuki drawled. “It seems your brother came all this way just to see you.”

“No,” Itachi murmured.

Sasuke slowly stood. “What did you do to him?”

Kazuki shrugged. He circled around behind Itachi in a slow, loping walk, stepping lightly over the rusted shackles that bound him. “What does it look like, Sasuke-kun? Surely it’s obvious. Oh, but you probably mean _how._ ” He came to a stop behind Itachi, but didn’t look at him; his attention was fixed firmly on Sasuke. Smart. “It was simple, really.”

_“Simple?”_

The disbelief must have shown on Sasuke's face, because a sly, amused smile pulled across Kazuki's mouth. “You didn’t know? That’s precious.”

Sasuke narrowed his eyes. “Didn’t know what?”

“He’s blind and dying. How else do you think I was able to get the jump on him?”

Sasuke’s mind stalled, started again. “You’re lying.”

“I’m not.” Kazuki put both his hands on Itachi’s shoulders. Sasuke resisted the violent and immediate urge to slice them from his wrists. “I’d been tracking him and his partner for a week. Imagine my surprise when he split off from the blue one and had himself a little coughing fit. It was impressively bad. And the perfect opportunity to strike—there was no way he could defend against anything while he was busy hacking up blood.” Kazuki gave a little laugh and patted Itachi on the head like he was some kind of dog. “So, I gave it a shot. And what do you know! It worked. He didn’t even see it coming.

“I’m not one to overestimate my own abilities, Sasuke-kun. Were Itachi at his full power, I wouldn’t stand a chance. But, well.” He tipped Itachi’s head to the side. There was no resistance. “As you can see, he’s rather out of it.”

Sasuke’s throat worked in cold fury. The tight knot of hatred within him felt like it was snapping, fraying. How dare this— _nobody_ try to take his victory from him? How dare he reduce Itachi to this pathetic broken shell, bloodied and bruised? How dare he try to steal Sasuke’s closure? Snatch away the only thing he lived for? How dare he _hurt his brother?_

“You’ve made a huge mistake,” he said. He heard his own voice as if from somewhere very far away. He sounded much too calm for how he truly felt. Too much like Itachi. “And now you’re going to pay for it.”

Kazuki put his blackened teeth back on display. “I sincerely doubt that, Sasuke-kun. Your brother, on the other hand, hasn’t even begun to pay for what he’s done.”

“What he’s _done?_ ” Sasuke almost laughed. This fool didn’t even know the half of it. “That’s my business. Stay out of it.”

“I wish I could, Sasuke-kun, but he murdered my daughter.”

“I don’t care about your dead daughter,” Sasuke said coldly. “And I don’t care about you. Join her. At least you’ll be a family again.”

A hoarse, wet voice floated out from beneath the matted sheet of hair. “I apologize for my brother’s manners, Kazuki-san,” Itachi said. “As your quarrel is with me, I request that you forgive his insolence, and allow him to leave this place unharmed.”

“Oh, I don’t know, Itachi-san,” said Kazuki, faux-concernedly. “He’s been very rude. To the both of us. I’m not sure if I can let that slide.”

“I insist. Sasuke, go.”

“No.” Sasuke felt the corners of his own mouth pull into a sneering smile. He was going to enjoy this. “Kazuki, is it? You must be stupid if you ever thought I’d just let you kill him.”

“From what I understand, I’d be doing you a big favor,” said Kazuki.

“Sasuke,” Itachi said again, more sharply; gravel crunched in his voice. A warning.

Sasuke put his hand on his sword hilt. Thumbed up the habaki from the saya with a little _click._

“Itachi’s life is mine,” Sasuke said. “If you really want to do me a favor, then _die._ ”

Kazuki sighed. “I suppose it can’t be helped…”

His fingers moved up from Itachi’s shoulder, to his neck, to the sharp line of his jaw, before fisting in Itachi’s hair and yanking his head back. “Say goodbye to your little brother, Itachi-san.” Itachi’s eyes tightened in pain; his chest rose and fell in shallow, shuddery increments. Kazuki put his lips to Itachi’s ear and murmured, “But don’t worry; since you asked so nicely, I won’t make him suffer.” He grinned. “Much. But it’s not like you’d be able to see it, anyway.”

Itachi tensed and whispered, "Sasuke—"

But Sasuke was already moving.

Two senbon whistled past his head; another embedded itself into his thigh, and the last into his arm. He used Kusanagi to deflect the rest of the spray, but they had only been a distraction: he saw the smoke bomb release the poison in a billowing plume of bright green gas, expanding to fill the room at an alarming rate. He felt it immediately try to take hold, felt it sink into his pores and flood his veins, and smiled, because it was useless: he was immune, after all. Orochimaru had built up his tolerance to all known poisons and venoms the moment he’d arrived in Sound. He had years of snake bites and needle marks to prove it.

This was nothing.

The look on Kazuki’s face when he realized this—when he understood that Sasuke couldn’t be slowed, couldn’t be stopped, that the poison wouldn’t take, that his chakra pathways wouldn’t close—was viciously, unaccountably satisfying. It sent a pulse of electric joy up Sasuke’s spine and down his arm, sparking the lightning in his hand. He saw the confusion, and then the fear, bleed into Kazuki’s eyes; he saw the exact moment, the very second, when Kazuki knew he was going to die. He witnessed it all in fine red filigree.

Kazuki tried to run, but Sasuke got to him first.

“What’s the matter?” he mocked, eyes burning. He squeezed Kazuki’s throat, watched his skin scorch and flake and peel. “You seem upset. Thought you had the upper hand?”

“How—” Kazuki choked. The yellowed whites of his eyes reflected sickly blue-green in the light of the clamorous Chidori. “Why—isn’t it—working?”

“Beg for your life, and I might tell you.”

Kazuki’s mouth clamped shut. Well. At least he was a true shinobi, and not some sniveling coward.

“Have it your way,” Sasuke said, and pushed the Chidori into his throat and through his spine.

 

* * *

 

Itachi was still shackled to the chair.

Sasuke tore the senbon from his arm and leg and limped back over to him. He was panting shallowly. Each breath sounded like the crumple of rice paper. He looked barely conscious, but his eyes were open, if heavily lidded. His expression seemed strangely, blankly relieved.

Sasuke stood there, looking down at him. At the man who had killed his entire family, so close to death already. His brother. His enemy.

It would be so easy. So easy to just kill him now and get it over with.

Energy still crackled in his hand. At his fingertips. Down the blade of his sword. The smell of ozone burst on the air. The light of another half-formed Chidori bounced off the blood-slick planes of Itachi’s face and seared the space between them.

Itachi’s throat was pale and bare, save for the oil slicks of dark blood, the network of blue veins standing out from his flesh. Sasuke laid the crackling blade of Kusanagi against his skin. The smell of burning flesh joined the rank charred stink of Kazuki’s corpse. He could separate Itachi’s head from his neck with so little effort; he would see those horrible red eyes go dead at last.

Except they weren’t red. They were black as volcanic glass, glazed and empty.

“Do it,” Itachi whispered. He took another rattling breath—a strained, horrible, metallic sound. “End it, Sasuke. Kill me.”

Sasuke imagined Itachi’s head rolling across the floor. He imagined his broken body slumping to the ground in a heap, like a puppet with its strings cut. He imagined the room where he’d first found him, so long ago: he saw his parents collapsed in a pool of their own blood, freshly spilled, the moonlight from the window shining against the blackening slickness. He saw Itachi, standing above their sprawled bodies.

“Why do you hesitate?” Itachi strained against his bonds, but it was a laughably feeble attempt. “Are you frightened, little brother? Or are you still too weak-minded to do what must be done? If you don’t take this opportunity, you’re even more of a spineless fool than I thought.”

He was right. It was the perfect opportunity. One that might never come again. Sasuke’s heart pounded in his throat. So easy. So easy. _Kill me. Do it. End it._

_Die._

His body stalled. His mind churned. He felt his grip on the sword hilt tighten and become slick with sweat. He couldn’t stand the sight of Itachi’s face—how much older, and younger, he looked—how frail and sick.

“You can’t even fight back,” he spat. This wasn’t Itachi. He wanted a challenge. He wanted something to prove his power against, not this… pitiful mockery of his worst nightmare. He lowered the sword. “You disgust me.”

Itachi’s eyes squeezed shut. His face was carefully blank. He said nothing.

Sasuke untied him.

 

* * *

 

Itachi was too weak to stand on his own, so Sasuke propped him up with an arm around his ribs. He was silent, but Sasuke could tell the movement was causing him pain; his body was likely more broken than he was letting on. He half-walked, half-carried him to the wall and let him slide down into a sitting position, then crouched beside him.

“The antidote,” Itachi said quietly.

Sasuke held up one of the vials he'd taken from Kazuki's body. “Is this it?”

Itachi’s eyes barely focused. They were still black, still glazed. Sasuke found himself hoping, wishing they would turn red, just so he could have some kind of excuse to lash out; evidence that Itachi was lying, that this was just another elaborate illusion.

“I don’t know,” Itachi said. “What does it smell like?”

Kazuki's words slammed back into him. _He’s blind._ And Itachi’s nose was clogged with blood, and likely broken; two of his senses—no, three; his chakra, his Sharingan—had been taken from him, stolen by poison and sickness.

Sasuke gritted his teeth. “It’s a clear liquid. Smells sweet. Like—some kind of flower.”

Itachi’s eyes closed. “Yes. That’s it. I smelled it earlier.” He paused to cough, ragged and scraping. The sound was one of the worst Sasuke had ever heard. A dying animal. “I managed to get him to injure himself, before I lost access to the Sharingan. He must have used it then.”

Sasuke uncapped it, grabbed Itachi by the back of the neck, and tipped it down his throat. Itachi made no move to resist him. He watched the effects through a film of red: he could see the dark sludge clinging to his chakra pathways immediately recoil and writhe, eaten up by the shining chakra-infused antidote. But the damage had already been done: it wasn’t enough to simply remove the poison. Itachi’s chakra pathways had withered and decayed. They needed extensive healing before he could use them again. He was useless. Defenseless.

A sitting duck.

Had Sasuke not found him in time, he would have died.

The idea scorched his insides with fresh rage. If Itachi had died before he’d had a chance to kill him himself—if Kazuki had been allowed to continue—if he hadn’t _been there._

Itachi coughed again. The wheezing was terrible to listen to. Sasuke could hear the crackle in his lungs, could feel them struggling to expand beneath his grip. Itachi twisted away and bent at the waist. Sasuke held him upright as he retched and shuddered, his shoulders shaking with the force of each wracking cough.

How long had he been sick for? How could he have let it get this bad?

Why hadn’t he found someone to treat it?

“Pills,” Itachi rasped, when he could breathe again; he sounded like he’d swallowed glass. Blood smeared his mouth and lips and had stained his teeth a bright wet red. He looked barely human. Sasuke fought the urge to shake him until he’d returned to his usual self—the calm, terrifying Itachi who’d broken his wrist without a second thought, who’d destroyed his mind, who was so much more than this miserable broken shell.

“Where?”

“My cloak.”

Sasuke sent a clone to get it. The cloak was hanging neatly from a piece of splintered wood sticking out from the wall, soaked and heavy with blood. The clone fished out a small glass bottle from an inside pocket filled with little white pills and brought it over, then dissipated. “How many?”

Itachi didn’t answer him. His eyes had drooped to slits; only the thinnest sliver of milky veined red showed beneath the blood-clumped fans of his eyelashes. Sasuke did shake him, then; he grabbed the back of his neck and forced their gazes to connect, took hold of Itachi’s fog-heavy mind and dived. He was teetering on the edge of consciousness. The world inside his head was dark and humid, as jagged as obsidian. Sasuke kept him tied to reality, but he was too weak to speak aloud—barely present enough to respond to his Sharingan.

_Just one,_ said Itachi into his mind; it was only a whisper, but his voice was low and calm, normal, absent the hoarse ravages of reality. He didn’t sound ruined, or raw. He sounded like he always had, like Sasuke remembered him. In memories. In nightmares.

_One a day. Never more than that. Unless you’d like to kill me that way._

_I’ll kill you with my bare hands,_ Sasuke said viciously.

_Of course you will,_ Itachi said, with weary affection.

Sasuke froze. He hated that tone of voice more than anything. It was such a blatant lie—like Itachi could feel affection for anything.

He pushed one of the little capsules past Itachi’s bloodied lips. Itachi swallowed with difficulty, but managed to force it down; his body relaxed, the tension fading from his limbs, and he didn’t cough again. Good. Sasuke didn’t think he could take another second of seeing Itachi like this—this horribly, contemptibly weak. It was unforgivable. Just looking at him made Sasuke’s stomach turn.

_Now let me rest_ , Itachi murmured, as voiceless as the wind, and the insubstantial ghost of him in Sasuke’s mind raised the impression of his hand, two fingers extended—then let it fall, the movement aborted.

_Next time, Sasuke._

Sasuke withdrew from his mind as if he’d been burned. He let Itachi drop into deep, dreamless unconsciousness.


End file.
